page_title: Corsham
section_title: Features
hierarchical_section_title: Corsham / Features
caption_attribution_description: English: A peacock ambles along the High Street in Corsham, Wiltshire
context_page_description: Corsham is an historic market town and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England. It is at the south-western edge of the Cotswolds, just off the A4 national route, 28 miles southwest of Swindon, 20 miles southeast of Bristol, 8 miles northeast of Bath and 4 miles southwest of Chippenham.
  Historically, Corsham was a centre for agriculture and later, the wool industry, and remains a focus for quarrying Bath Stone. It contains several notable historic buildings; among them the stately home of Corsham Court. During the Second World War and the Cold War it became a major administrative and manufacturing centre for the Ministry of Defence, with numerous establishments both above ground and in disused quarry tunnels. More recently, due in part of the presence of the MOD since WWII, the Corsham area has become a significant national digital hub. The £2.5 million Mansion House project in the town centre provides incubation space for digital entrepreneurs, start-ups and growing SMEs.
  The parish includes the villages of Gastard and Neston, which is at the gates of the Neston Park estate.
context_section_description: Corsham's small town centre includes the historic High Street and the Martingate Centre, a late 20th-century retail development.
  The stately home of Corsham Court can also be found in the town centre. Standing on a former Saxon Royal Manor, it is based on an Elizabethan manor home from 1582. Since 1745, it has been part of the Methuen estate. The house has an extensive collection of Old Masters, rooms furnished by Robert Adam and Thomas Chippendale, and parks landscaped by Capability Brown and Humphry Repton. The house is open to the public all year round excluding December and is famed locally for its peacocks, which wander about the streets. The owner of Corsham Court in the mid-seventeenth century was the commander of the Parliamentarian New Model Army in Wiltshire; his wife built what came to be known as the Hungerford Almshouses in the centre of town.
caption: A peacock makes his way along Church Street
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "600", "Image YResolution": "600", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2019:02:17 22:08:32", "Image ExifOffset": "164", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5449", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3405", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2241"}